Google is hoping to avoid a Google Glass-style backlash for its big augmented reality play

BARCELONA,
Spain - Google has a bold vision for the future - but first, it
has to avoid the mistakes of the past.

Remember Google Glass? It was one of Google's most notorious
failures. A head-mounted computer that ran apps and let its
wearer take videos and photos, it came to to symbolise the
glaring disconnect between the tech industry and the real world.
Wearers were ridiculed as "glassholes," and it was banned from
some venues over privacy concerns. Some wearers were even
punched.

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In 2015, Google Glass was discontinued. But the Californian
technology company is now in the early stages of another
augmented reality technology project that promises to transform
how people interact with the world around them - and with the
potential for similar privacy concerns.

Project Tango is augmented reality for smartphones. Point your
(compatible) phone's camera, and it'll overlay a virtual world on
top of the real ones - digital signs and objects, viewable only
through the portal in your hand. You could see how a sofa you
want to buy looks in your room, or play a game based around the
objects on your coffee table.

Right now, it's only available in a few high-end devices, but
Google's ultimate vision is to see it in nearly every handset, as
essential as GPS, company reps told a group of journalists at a
briefing in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday.

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But what does this mean for privacy? By transforming the real
world into a digital interface, it opens the door to far more
intensive tracking and recording of everyone in it, with public
camera usage becoming far more ubiquitous than ever before.

caption

An example of Project Tango in action, inserting a fantastical monster into the user's living room.

source

Lenovo

For
Google's VP of business and operations for VR, Amit Singh, the
fact that it's in a phone should make all the difference. "I
think the smartphone-base form factor makes it eminently more
acceptable initially, in my view," he said.

With Glass, he added, "you never knew. And it's the same thing
with Spectacles [Snapchat parent company Snap's new
camera-mounted glasses], it's hard to tell. So as an industry,
we'll have to continue to mature down that path."

But this might not always be the case. Asked what his theoretical
ideal form of augmented reality would be, Singh described a
simple, "unobtrusive" pair of glasses with a full field of view
and clear lenses.

He cautioned that "you're talking about the future now, I can't
predict when that'll be" - but it's a vision that may concern
those who were opposed to Google Glass the first time around.

And with the likes of Project Tango, the first steps are already
being made. "AR will first come, very, very soon, in smartphones.
Everyone has them … that'll happen sooner than most people
realise."

Singh - and Google more broadly - is betting that attitudes have
also softened in the intervening years.

"I think over time, my suspicion is …" he said, before changing
track. "I was walking through Mobile World Congress, people just
filming everybody, it's just what's happening, in three or four
years, is just societally things have changed."